The current thread about Osprey on flea-bay and Renis offer to sell a bag of susats and a rigid raider got me thinking about kit that I've found in G10 stores that wasnt on the flick.

weirdest for me was an "SBS" (see what I did there, special forces angle already ) type fold down canoe. It was in two canvas bags, one with the frame and one with the shell. It had and NSN and I found it in the index under its NSN.

It was sitting right at the back of the Regt canvas stores under a stack of 12 x 12s.

2 effing big boats for me to look after for a "few weeks" which in fact turned into 6+ months. Came on 2 40ft trailers, craned off then towed into a shed. All backdoor stuff and didnt sign for them. In return i got a day out in the boats that replaced the ones i was looking after.
Was so tempted to Ebay them but then "buyer collects" maybe a bit difficult!
Pic below....

I was given the task of running the stores in a small trials unit. The amount of kit that was not accounted for included drysuits, a para glider of some type, various life-jackets and even a bloody unicycle.

Had the usual bout of NRPS hiding away '72 pattern combat smocks for people who bought him beer and didn't call him a cnut, but the best i've seen was a large collection of "Gauntlets Air Gunner" at SCAF RAF Coltishall in the mid-80's funny it was a fighter base and always has been, but going up to SHQ to have a look at the photo archive I discovered an awful lot of photos with various Pilots and SNCO Aircrew with motorcycles and curiously familiar hand protection!

There were also a small numbers of Camel Saddles and pith helmets at RAF Brampton when we went to clean up after a slightly suspicious fire in the late 80's...lots of kit written off, ask no questions...

Ah Kit rightoffs now I suppose we could chuck those into this thread as well

1986 HF transmission cab underslung on a Chinook. The pilot gets a wobble on the rotars and dumps that cab from about a couple of hundred feet up. i was involved in the right off and believe me the amount of kit that was apparently in there it would have to be a fucing tardis. IFRC the bill was touching Â£800K.

As QM, I took over from a unit (which will remain nameless) on Ops and found that in the write off register, the previous Units QM, who had powers to write off about Â£1k worth of kit, had spookily managed to depreciate (age etc) the price of a LR GS, which had been "lost" down to within his powers of write off - no reason to involve the Comd Offr there then!

We were all ecvacuated and lived like gypsys in other units spare accomodation till the mess was sorted.

The man at Q&M handed out insurance claim forms willy nilly and every lad I knew claimed for every bit of kit going, including the bloody pads who never lived in.

Happy (water damaged) Days

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I remember a senior officer telling me that years before when the IRA bombed a squaddie block, that the insurance didn't pay out as it was an act of terrorism so there is some way of claiming of the goverment, at which point everyone had had a pool table, Rembrandt and rolex in their locker.

Ah Kit rightoffs now I suppose we could chuck those into this thread as well

1986 HF transmission cab underslung on a Chinook. The pilot gets a wobble on the rotars and dumps that cab from about a couple of hundred feet up. i was involved in the right off and believe me the amount of kit that was apparently in there it would have to be a fucing tardis. IFRC the bill was touching Â£800K.

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Well if you belive the stories that get bandied about, Atlantic Conveyor went down with so much kit on board she should never have managed to float out of Southampton

Ah Kit rightoffs now I suppose we could chuck those into this thread as well

1986 HF transmission cab underslung on a Chinook. The pilot gets a wobble on the rotars and dumps that cab from about a couple of hundred feet up. i was involved in the right off and believe me the amount of kit that was apparently in there it would have to be a fucing tardis. IFRC the bill was touching Â£800K.

Click to expand...

Well if you belive the stories that get bandied about, Atlantic Conveyor went down with so much kit on board she should never have managed to float out of Southampton

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Same with the Sheffield apparently - a lot of kit was on 'loan' to her. I've been told it was a big surprise that every units stores were '100%' correct on their return to the UK.

A different slant to being 'on the books', a colleague once related how they took over a stores with 6100 AGR's on the books. He found 100 S10s just fine. After a lot of searching he found several wooden crates, untouched, carefully filled with WW1 era face masks which were designed to be urinated on and worn! 6000 in total.

This 14" gun barrel now lies outside the Royal Armouries at Fort Nelson. Apparently it is a spare barrel for a King George V class battleship. Apparently it was sitting at the back of a warehouse for nearly 60 years, being ticked off as "Barrel, 14", and it was only when BAE, having taken over the site, started to do a site clearance it was realised that perhaps a museum was a better place for it!

As QM, I took over from a unit (which will remain nameless) on Ops and found that in the write off register, the previous Units QM, who had powers to write off about Â£1k worth of kit, had spookily managed to depreciate (age etc) the price of a LR GS, which had been "lost" down to within his powers of write off - no reason to involve the Comd Offr there then!

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So the Equipment Manager at BAOR or Andover was happy to strike from Census and Account you "written off" Land Rover GS - because it was lost and you wrote it off

When I was at Detmold, somebody found an early version of the jet ski loitering in the back of the MT hangar. It was bright yellow, manufactured by Reliant (which didn't exactly fill me with confidence) and powered by a small 2-stroke engine.

Our task and we chose to accept it, was to prepare it for its maiden voyage with yours truly as the test pilot as the other bloke in the GSE Bay couldn't swim. So using a two part chemical called Clocel, we made expanded polystyrene bouyancy bags, tuned up the engine and noshed over some of the (many) cracks.

Then somebody found that there wasn't a lake around that allowed powered craft and the thing disappeared never to be seen again.

Ah Kit rightoffs now I suppose we could chuck those into this thread as well

1986 HF transmission cab underslung on a Chinook. The pilot gets a wobble on the rotars and dumps that cab from about a couple of hundred feet up. i was involved in the right off and believe me the amount of kit that was apparently in there it would have to be a fucing tardis. IFRC the bill was touching Â£800K.

Click to expand...

Well if you belive the stories that get bandied about, Atlantic Conveyor went down with so much kit on board she should never have managed to float out of Southampton